La Paglia acts out his fantasy role

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'I want to provide facilities for kids who show talent and I think that's an area I can help': Anthony La Paglia.Photo: Neil Newitt

A stake in Sydney FC will give Anthony La Paglia the chance to
return to his first love, writes Michael Cockerill.

Anthony La Paglia has been outed - by himself. Fame and fortune
in Hollywood is one thing, living out a dream is quite another.

Yesterday the 46-year-old star of the television blockbuster
Without A Trace turned back the clock to his first love and
confirmed he would be taking a 15 per cent stakeholding in Sydney
FC, worth an estimated $800,000. So excited was La Paglia to be
talking football that he was late for the premiere of his latest
movie, Winter Solstice.

Not that he cared.

Speaking from Los Angeles, where he still plays socially with
Hollywood FC, he said: "This is the biggest thrill I've had since I
got my first paying job as an actor. I've always harboured a secret
desire that one day I'd be part of a football organisation. I
didn't really conceive I'd be an owner of a club, but when it came
down to it, it wasn't a hard decision to make.

"I've been involved since I was nine years old, and I've never
lost my love for the game. Give me the choice, and I'd quit acting
in two seconds flat."

There was a time football was the choice, but recalling his
youth in his home city of Adelaide, where his goalkeeping potential
earned him a place in the state schoolboys team and the offer of a
trial in England with Oldham Athletic, La Paglia conceded: "If I'm
honest, I had some promise but I was much better in training than
in the games."

La Paglia made it to the first-team bench of West Adelaide and
Adelaide City when both were in the national league and had stints
in the state league with Polonia and Azzurri. At Adelaide City, he
did get opportunities to fill in for first-choice keeper Roger
Romanowicz in pre-season games but, by his own admission, "I f- - -
ed them up".

Former Socceroo John Perin, a teammate at Adelaide City,
remembers La Paglia as "a very useful goalkeeper who was probably
in the wrong place at the wrong time".

From Adelaide City it was a move across town to West Adelaide,
where he again performed bench-warming duties for Martyn Crook, but
from there a promising career slid quickly downhill.

"Sometimes a coach doesn't like you, and he doesn't like the way
you play, and that happened to me with Frank Schaefer at Azzurri,"
La Paglia recalled.

"I came to the realisation I wasn't going to make it, so I
retired at the age of 20. But it didn't take away my love of the
game, it just gave me a reality check."

Fast-forward 26 years, and La Paglia is involved in football in
Australia again, and palpably excited by the opportunity. But why
Sydney FC, and not in his home town, where Adelaide United will
also be playing in the A-League when the inaugural seasons kicks
off in August?

"My parents moved to Brisbane many years ago, and I don't have
any immediate family left in Adelaide," he said.

"Whenever I go home now, I go to Sydney. That's where Gia's
[wife Gia Carides] family is. I've spent every Christmas for the
last 13 years in Sydney and I've got a great affinity with the
place.

"If I was going to invest in a team, I wanted it to be where I
could actually watch the games and be involved with the club when I
was there."

La Paglia's first involvement with Sydney FC will be at the
club's $150-per-head launch at Star City Casino on May 3, and he
will be in the grandstand to watch Pierre Littbarski's team make
its competitive debut in the World Club Championship qualifier
against Queensland Roar in Gosford four days later.

For someone who has been living abroad for 23 years, La Paglia
has kept a keen eye on the way football has developed during his
absence. "Whenever I'm back in Sydney I go looking for a game, and
I find pockets of football everywhere I go," he said.

"I believe there is a huge fan base in Australia. People who
would go to games if they had a reason to.

"That's what's so exciting about the A-League - it's brand new.
Everyone I spoke to, from Frank Lowy [FFA president] and Walter
Bugno [Sydney FC chairman] and down the line, they were so
enthusiastic, so committed. That's what impressed me the most,
because it was genuine.

"I'm not getting involved in Sydney FC for self-promotion, that
doesn't interest me.

"I'm not as qualified as the people running the club now, so my
interest is to learn as much as possible, and be involved as much
as I can be without being intrusive. Perhaps my visibility can help
draw attention to the club, I don't know."

So how hands-on will La Paglia be? "Well, I'm not going to pick
the squad, put it that way," he said.

"But I believe I can have input as a board member, I'd like to
be consulted on things like the players we purchase, and the
players we sell.

"But personally, my main interest is to be involved in the
development of a youth program. It's cheaper to develop players
than buy them from overseas and for that you need a facility, and
facilities cost money. I want to provide facilities for kids who
show talent and I think that's an area I can help."